Sinners and Shrouds

by Jonathan Latimer

  The bartender took a deep breath, bellowed, ‘Emile!’ Startled, Clay and the Nicholses stepped backwards. A voice somewhere in the rear of the building answered, ‘Coming!’ and presently a tiny man in black trousers and a white shirt emerged from the hall. His head bobbed jerkily at the three visitors, one bob for each of them.

  ‘Wanta earn five bucks?’ the bartender demanded, directing a thumb at the bill on the bar. The other bill had vanished.

  Emile nodded several times.

  ‘Remember the dame bums around here week-ends? One with the mink coat?’

  As Emile nodded again, Clay felt the blood leave his face. He was remembering the mink coat tossed over the black satin sofa. This was where he had met her. He felt Camille and Tom staring at him.

  ‘What’s her name?’ the bartender asked.

  Emile’s shrug disclaimed all knowledge of her name.

  ‘You used to chin with her enough!’ The bartender scowled at the little man. ‘What’d you call her?’

  ‘Madam,’ Emile said. ‘Out of politeness.’

  The bartender snorted in disgust. ‘Well, that does it!’ He shook the ice sack violently, tossed it after the first one.

  ‘I’ll just take that dough back,’ Nichols said, moving towards the bar.

  ‘A moment.’ Emile held up a thin hand. ‘I think.’ He turned to Clay. ‘You try to buy the magnum of brandy, no?’

  Clay stared at him blankly.

  ‘You sure did,’ the bartender said. ‘Got sore when we wouldn’t sell you one. Social injustice, you said.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Clay.

  ‘The lady say we go to the Little Club,’ Emile said. ‘She say she is known there.’

  ‘Remember?’ the bartender asked Clay.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s where you was heading when you left here.’

  Nichols said, ‘That’s where we better head now.’

  ‘Closed,’ the bartender said. ‘Ain’t open Sundays.’

  Emile snapped his fingers. ‘Jacques!’

  ‘That’s real bright,’ the bartender said. ‘Give him a jingle.’

  Emile went out into the hall. ‘Head-waiter over there,’ the bartender explained. ‘Frog, like Emile.’ He began to polish glasses. After a while Emile returned, holding a sheet of paper.

  ‘He remembers,’ he announced. ‘Martel. Twenty-three dollars.’ He thrust out the sheet of paper. ‘Also the lady.’

  ‘Hold out for another fiver,’ the bartender advised.

  ‘Look, brother,’ Nichols said angrily, ‘I already gave you——’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ the bartender said hurriedly. ‘Give it to ’em, Emile.’

  On the paper in Emile’s spidery handwriting was: ‘Mrs Patricia Bruce, Melrose Manor, 3469 Edgewater Court.’ The name meant nothing to Clay.

  Camille, leaning over his shoulder, asked, ‘You’re sure that’s the right name, Emile?’

  ‘I write what Jacques tell me.’

  ‘What colour hair?’ Nichols asked.

  ‘Brown-like,’ the bartender said.

  Clay felt relieved. The dead girl’s hair might be described as golden, platinum, corn or straw-like, yellow, tawny, saffron or even xanthic, but never brown-like. Which indicated Mrs Bruce was somebody else, and that there’d been three women: the redhead, Mrs Bruce and Mary Trevor.

  As Emile took the five-dollar bill, the bartender asked: ‘Why the search, if you’ll pardon the curiosity?’

  ‘Fifteen bucks, brother,’ Nichols said, ‘and we’ll pardon anything.’

  ‘I mighta known.’ The bartender blew on a highball glass, began to spread the mist about with a discoloured cloth. ‘Forget I mention it.’

  They went out through the mirrored hall, hearing Emile’s voice demanding, ‘Fifteen bucks? What he mean, fifteen bucks?’ and walked back to Michigan Avenue.

  The taxi driver had never heard of either Edgewater Court or the Melrose Manor, but with the help of a city street guide borrowed from a policeman, he finally found both. The Court, only half a block long, had evidently once been the park-like access to four massive, red-brick houses, but now it was a wilderness of tangled bushes, unkempt grass and flowers, and elms spotted with some kind of a blight. On the last house was a tarnished metal plaque reading MELROSE MANOR, and in front of the plaque an overturned trash can had scattered cardboard boxes and torn newspapers across the walk.

  The front door creaked, stuck open as they went into the vestibule. The air inside had a musty smell. To the right were six recessed mailboxes, and on the next to the end box was glued a piece of paper on which had been printed in violet ink: Mrs Patricia Bruce. Above the box was a black button and Nichols pressed it with his thumb. After a time he pressed it again, but there was no answer. He tried the vestibule’s inner door, found it was open.

  ‘What’s her number?’ he asked.

  ‘Five,’ Camille said.

  The inner stairway was unlit and the worn carpet felt slippery under their feet. Somewhere on the first floor meat and onions were cooking and towards the rear of the building a radio was broadcasting a ball game. Apartment 5 was at the end of a hall on the second floor.

  Their knocking echoed inside the apartment, but no one came to the door. ‘What’ll we do?’ Camille asked. Nichols turned the doorknob, pushed and the door opened a crack. ‘We housebreak,’ he said. They followed him inside.

  The room was dark except where the light from outside, seeping through heavy curtains, outlined the squat shapes of chairs, glistened on silver picture frames and faintly illuminated a rectangle of green carpet. A clock ticked by one of the windows. Clay jumped as Camille called softly, ‘Anybody home?’ He didn’t like the feeling the apartment gave him, and he liked it even less that there was no answer.

  ‘Steady, son,’ Nichols said.

  He went to a window, parted the curtains. Sunlight, flecked with golden dust, sheeted the floor, brightened the green of the room’s walls. It seemed to be a sort of living-dining-bedroom. On one side was an alcove with a painted table and three chairs, and in a recess on the opposite side, half-concealed by moth-frayed velvet drapes, stood a pulldown bed. In the main part of the room were two lumpy overstuffed chairs, one yellow and one green, and a sofa with cotton showing through split seams. On a table by the sofa’s head was an empty gin bottle.

  ‘Do you suppose House Beautiful has seen this?’ Camille asked in an awed voice.

  Nichols bent over the yellow chair. ‘What’ve we got here?’ He unpinned a torn piece of paper from the arm, held it to a patch of dusty light and began to read aloud:

  Cleo—Love Nest for passion fruit. Walpurg night!

  Cool, girl, cool! Rendez-me soonest! Pat.

  They pondered this message in silence. Finally Camille asked, ‘What’s it mean?’

  Nichols pinned the note back on the chair, then stared inquiringly at Clay. ‘You’re the family friend, boy.’

  ‘Love Nest’s a dive,’ Clay said. ‘Queers.’

  ‘Our Mrs Bruce!’ Nichols exclaimed in a shocked voice.

  He went into the dining alcove. Clay followed, leaving Camille in the living-room section. ‘This place spooks me,’ he said. Nichols went into the pullman kitchen.

  On the kitchen sink were dirty dishes, an egg that had been cracked but not used, a half-empty bottle of milk, a slice of bread out of which a bite had been taken, and a dish of partially-melted butter. The milk smelled sour.

  ‘Not the housekeeping type,’ Nichols observed, opening a cupboard.

  ‘What do you think you’re looking for?’ Clay asked.

  ‘Mrs Bruce,’ Nichols said, opening the icebox.

  She wasn’t there. As Clay uneasily watched other cupboards being opened, Camille’s voice, urgent, almost hysterical, came to them. ‘Tom! Sam!’

  ‘I knew it!’ Clay exclaimed.

  He followed Nichols into the living-room. ‘In here!’ Camille called.

  They went through a door by the folding bed, fo
und her standing in front of a small dressing-table, peering at something on the table. ‘What is it?’ Nichols demanded.

  Camille could barely speak. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the dresser. ‘That photograph!’

  The men bent forward to look. ‘Well, Jee-sus!’ Nichols said. ‘Jee-sus!’

  Clay, squinting in the uncertain light, saw the photograph was of a bride and groom standing under an arbour covered with huge roses. The bride was pretty and she had on a veil that fell from her head to a swirl of material at her feet. The groom wore an Ascot scarf, a cutaway and a silk hat, and under one of his arms was an enormous brandy bottle. Clay bent closer, saw to his utter amazement that he was the groom and that his free arm was linked to a woman he had never seen before in his life. He knew, though, that she was Mrs Bruce, because under the picture was written in violet ink:

  Sammy and Pat

  Chapter 8

  ON Sunday the big drugstore in the south-west corner of the Globe building resembled a cathedral. There was a hushed quality about the interior, even with fans rustling the one-cent-sale pennants that hung from wires like dry, festooned flowers in a Mexican church, and the clerks went solemnly about their business, attending the occasional customer like priests performing rites, walking softly and speaking in low tones. The displays, too, had a special quality on Sunday: the pyramids of bottled mouthwashes and vitamin pills, of toothpaste and Kotex boxes, of soap bars and douche bags and razor blades, seemed like shrines, to be knelt before in silent prayer.

  Sam Clay, remembering this feeling of peace, stopped at the drugstore counter for a Coke before going up to the Globe’s city room. He needed a moment to pull himself together and to think, if either was possible, before plunging into the hue and cry upstairs. He wanted mainly to think about the photograph, but it was so inexplicable, so impossible, that his mind refused to do anything but reject it. No matter how drunk he had been, he kept assuring himself, he would never have got married. Especially not to a woman he’d picked up in a bar.

  But then, another part of his mind assured him, neither would he ever murder anyone. Yet it seemed more than likely he had. With murder done, can marriage be far behind? he thought incoherently, and ordered another Coke.

  One thing, though: the marriage should be cleared up fairly soon. The Nicholses were on their way to the Love Nest, to Mrs Bruce (he refused to think of her as Mrs Sam Clay) and she’d tell them what had happened. Maybe she could clear up a lot of other things, too. Mr Bundy had said it was important to find out what he’d done during the night, and Mrs Bruce should be an authority on that. Why in hell couldn’t he remember?

  A man sat down on the next stool. ‘Most excitement since Lincoln assassinated,’ he declared, wiping sweat from his puffy face with a paper napkin. It was Saul Blair, the paper’s veteran rewrite man.

  ‘I thought you were on vacation,’ Clay said.

  ‘No longer.’ Saul took a fresh napkin, wiped the folds of skin under his collar. ‘Back to the engine house.’ If he felt the cathedral-like atmosphere of the drugstore he wasn’t letting it bother him. ‘Son!’ he called to the soda jerk. ‘Banana split and a double Bromo!’

  Startled, the boy let a triangle of chocolate pie slide from a plate in his hand. It fell on the floor with a soft plop. He started to bend over it.

  ‘Leave it!’ Saul shouted. ‘The Bromo! Pronto!’ He rolled the second napkin into a ball, flipped it over his shoulder. ‘Damn miserable shame!’ he said, his voice charged with emotion.

  ‘The pie’s only a dime, Saul.’

  ‘Pie? Who’s talking about pie? The Baumholtz girl.’

  ‘Baumholtz?’ For a second Clay was bewildered and then he remembered. ‘The Trevor girl!’ He felt a sudden interest. ‘How’d you know her name was Baumholtz?’

  Saul began tossing the Bromo-Seltzer from glass to glass, like a magician doing a card trick. ‘Knew her aunt. High school orchestra with her. Bass viol. Laura Peterkins, too. Won the state contest.’

  While Clay sorted this out, Saul noisily gulped the Bromo. Some of the foam stayed on his nose. ‘Esther Baumholtz.’ He smacked his lips meditatively. ‘Fine woman, Esther.’

  ‘You tell Standish about her?’

  ‘He knows.’ Saul lunged half over the counter, eyed the nearly completed banana split. ‘Heavy on the whipped cream, son.’ He went on without turning his head. ‘If he doesn’t, somebody’ll tell him. Half the staff’s from Fort Worth—Canning, Parkinson, Charley Adair, Laura Peterkins, me, Mahoney. Standish, too.’

  ‘That’s so.’ Clay suddenly recalled hearing that when Simon Palmer had bought the Globe in 1937, he had moved in with most of the key men from his Fort Worth paper. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  Jowls trembling with the motions of his jaw, Saul began to eat the banana split. Clay watched him for a time, feeling there was a question he should ask, but not knowing what it was. It was odd Standish had pretended to know so little about the girl: they must have talked about Forth Worth when they were together. Canning, too. Why were they covering up?

  Torn between eating and breathing, Saul finally chose breathing. He leaned back from the counter, gasped, ‘What’s important … her from Fort Worth?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clay said. ‘Except maybe to find out who brought her here.’

  Saul eyed him shrewdly. ‘Think a man’s involved?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Nope. Laura Peterkins hired her. Out of friendship for Esther.’

  Well, that’s that, Clay thought, and then he remembered something else. ‘You ever talk to the girl?’

  ‘Couple of times.’

  ‘She tell you why she changed her name?’

  ‘Real name’s Trevor, probably.’

  ‘You never asked her?’

  ‘Why should I?’ Saul balanced a huge spoonful of peach ice-cream, chocolate syrup, marshmallow sauce, chopped nuts, whipped cream and cherries in front of his mouth. ‘None of my business.’ He engulfed the spoon with his lips, then said, ‘Kibdledhertoutitoncetow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, I kidded her about it once, though.’ He turned to Clay, black eyes twinkling above the discoloured liver blots. ‘Mary Trevor … Larry Trevor.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘For Pete’s sake! Oklahoma badman. Larry Trevor and the Hooded Nun!’

  ‘Burl Ives,’ Clay said.

  ‘Him,’ Saul agreed, ‘and every other guitar thumper in the country.’

  ‘But the song’s made up,’ Clay protested. ‘Folklore, like “Frankie and Johnny”.’

  ‘Folklore, my eye! Oklahoma history. Pair robbed fourteen banks, killed eleven men in twenty-eight days spring of ’32. Robbed three banks in one morning!’ Saul took a deep breath, began to chant in a whisky-cracked voice:

  Their third that day was the Ardmore bank,

  With Cashier Earl and President Frank

  Because he moved when Trevor said, ‘Halt!’

  The President died in the open vault.

  The Cashier knelt by the Forty-Five,

  Promising all if they’d leave him alive.

  When Trevor said, ‘Earl, I’ll pass you by;’

  Cried the Hooded Nun, ‘That man must die!’

  ‘He saw my face,’ cried the Hooded Nun.

  From under her robe she drew her gun,

  A blue-steel Colt en-laid with pearl,

  And that was the end of Cashier Earl.*

  Saul let his voice fade to a ghostly whisper with the final ‘Cashier Earl,’ giving the song a sinister tone. The entire drugstore was silent, except for the rustling one-cent-sale pennants.

  ‘Should have stuck with voice and the bass viol,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t have cirrhosis now.’ He began on the ice-cream again.

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Clay said. ‘What you were kidding her about.’

  ‘Play on names. Larry Trevor—Mary Trevor. Asked her how many banks she’d robbed.’ Saul was getting bored with the
conversation. ‘Nincompoop, like you. Never heard of Larry Trevor.’ He pointed a carbon-blued finger at the soda jerk. ‘Boy, lay another scoop of peach on this mess.’

  Clay wanted to ask about the Hooded Nun with the pearl en-laid pistol, but he realized the adventures of the Oklahoma pair, no matter how fascinating, had nothing to do with him. He paid his check, said, ‘See you later,’ and left Saul bent over his banana split, a plump man engaged in digging his grave with a long-handled spoon.

  In the city room the atmosphere had changed. There were no groups of gossiping reporters now, no running feet, no shouting, no confusion. Instead, a sort of electric tension, a sense of urgency hung over everything. There was no talking at the ordinarily relaxed copy desk; the rewrite men were working hard, hunched over their typewriters with almost identical scowls, and a dozen legmen were carrying on telephone conversations in earnest voices. Even the copy boys had a sober air. It was like the feeling before a deadline, but magnified a hundred times.

  Canning lifted his massive head from a sheaf of copy as Clay came up to the city desk. ‘Got anything?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘What’d Laura Peterkins have to say?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to see her yet.’

  ‘Well, get on it.’ Canning’s eyes were bleak. ‘Couple of other things, too. Want you to talk to the elevator boy. Gilmore.’

  Fear knotted Clay’s stomach. ‘He’s here?’

  The pale eyes studied him. ‘No, but we’ll find him for you. Meantime, go see the Plummer girl. She’s got a summary of what’s come in.’ Canning lowered his head, began to X out a paragraph on the sheet in front of him. ‘Read it and we’ll talk.’

  The knots loosened as Clay crossed the city room, but he still felt queasy. Laura Peterkins and Clarence Gilmore. The two people he couldn’t face, and Canning was pushing him at both. He was wondering how long he could dodge when he reached Alma Hummer’s desk. She retreated to the far edge of her chair, her skin turning an unpleasant shade of pink. ‘Mr Canning said——’ she began in a fluttery voice.

  ‘I know,’ Clay said. ‘Where’s the dope?’

  Alma pointed to some folded sheets of yellow paper beside her typewriter. ‘Police reports, what our people have found out, a note from Mr Talbot and——’ There was a faint note of triumph in her voice. ‘——something I found out myself.’